Pinterest is a web and mobile application company, which operates an eponymous photo sharing website. One must sign-up to use. The site was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp. It is managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and investors. Pinterest CEO Ben Silber Mann summarized the company as a “catalog of ideas,” rather than as a social network, that inspires users to “go out and do that thing.” Pinterest is a free website that requires registration to use. Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images—known as pins—and other media content (videos and images) through collections known as pin boards. Pinterest acts as a personalized media platform. Users can browse the content of others in their feed. Users can then save individual pins to one of their own boards using the “Pin It” button, with Pin boards typically organized by a central topic or theme. Users can personalize their experience with Pinterest by pinning items, creating boards, and interacting with other members. By doing so, the users “pin feed” displays unique, personalized results.

Pinterest makes possible: Allowing people to get close to the brands, products, and people who inspire them. Pinterest now accounting for 25% of retail referral traffic and driving four times more money per click than Twitter, Pinterest has proven its power as a massively effective place to connect with your audience. And many brands are considering whether they need to give their Pinterest marketing a bit of a push.

Are ready to start building your brand on Pinterest? Let’s talk about some ideas in detail that may work for you.

Before we talk about growing your audience, however, one of the most important questions to ask for any business or brand is: Is our audience worth growing on Pinterest?

As of April 2015, Pinterest had 72.8 million users, with 85% of them being women. Sound’s great isn’t it. From household to fashion accessories you can promote your brand in Pinterest. Look at the statistics, you can see why Pinterest is a social network that most businesses cannot afford to ignore and may even need to take precedence over all your other social media marketing. All marketers must not ignore this website. Let’s expand some more data on users worldwide.

Percentage of all US social media users that use Pinterest: 30%

Percentage of Pinterest users that are from outside the U.S.: 40%

Pinterest’s growth in users outside the U.S. in 2014: 135%

Average time spent on Pinterest per visit: 14.2 minutes

Are You Getting Pinterest Traffic?

Getting Traffic is always important part in marketing. So Get a hold of your Google analytics traffic stats and look through quickly to see if you’re getting any referral traffic already through Pinterest.

The best way to do this is to follow these steps:

Log in to your Google Analytics account.

Scroll down the left-hand menu and look for the option titled ‘Acquisition’. Click on it to open up a sub-menu.

In the list at the bottom of the page, you’ll see all the different sources of your traffic. Click on Social.

This will open up another list that will show you, in numbers, how much referral traffic you received from each social media channel in the last month. You can spot Pinterest there!

You might be surprised by how many people are already pinning images from your website or blog. While this is especially true for businesses that place a high value on images, such as those in retail, fashion, food, and travel.

How to Grow Your Audience!

Pin Consistently and Frequently

Timing can be important, though with global audiences, it’s often better to spread your content out over a span of the whole 24 hours so you’re leaving out people in other time zones. This exposes you to more of your audience more frequently and often leads to more pins, shares, and comments as a result. With frequency, more is often better, we find, with 5x a day. Experts recommend as much as 15-20 times a day, but if you’re a small company or brand, it’s better to pick a lower number and stay consistent than to do higher numbers.

Pin Good Quality Images Only

Massive task of finding the one perfect Pinterest picture that encompassed all the elements of a popular Pinterest image. So, what makes a perfect Pinterest image? These are the best characteristics: No human faces, little background, multiple colors, lots of red, moderate light and color and portrait style.

You’re not always going to be able to create the perfect Pinterest image. But incorporate enough of these characteristics and you’ll frequently be able to create a viral one.

Write Keyword-Rich Descriptions for Pins and Boards

Unlike Twitter and Facebook where content is shared quickly, read quickly, and disappears quickly, Pinterest boards are, for the most part, evergreen. What this means is while you may create a board and pin an image today, it may still be relevant to readers, especially new ones, months and even years from now. Pinterest boards are tagged with keywords and that the descriptions themselves are keyword-rich and specific. Optimize your pins. Don’t overthink this too much. Most people who search don’t go for fancy terminology. Looking for something like: ‘books’ or ‘quotes’ or ‘inspirational’.

Confirm Your Website

This one is vital; confirming your website on Pinterest can be a good first step in building trust with your new audience. You create brand awareness through this step, you’ll be able to see your logo or profile picture on Pins that people saved from your site. You’ll also have access to web analytics in Pinterest Analytics.

To do this, follow the following simple steps:

Go to settings, click “Confirm website” in the Website field.

Follow the instructions on the next page. You can verify with an HTML file or a Meta tag.

Once your website’s confirmed, you’ll see your logo or profile picture on Pins that people saved from your site.

Use Rich Pins

Pinterest defines rich pins as – Pins that include extra information right on the Pin itself.

There are six types of rich pins:

App Pins include an install button, so Pinners can download your app without ever leaving Pinterest.

Movie Pins include ratings, cast members and reviews to help Pinners learn about new flicks.

Recipe Pins include ingredients, cooking times and serving info to get Pinterest cooks excited to hit the kitchen.

Article Pins include headline, author and story description, helping Pinners find and save stories that matter to them.

Product Pins include real-time pricing, availability and where to buy. Pinners may also get notifications when prices drop more than 10%.

Place Pins include a map, address, and phone number.

Rich pins are a fantastic way to have your content stand out amongst the rest of the Pinterest crowd and give your products a bit of visibility and boost. Pinterest users can interact with or buy your products right from Pinterest itself.

Optimize Your Website to be Pinterest Friendly

This will help fellow pinners, after you start getting traffic on Pinterest; take steps to make your website Pinterest-optimized. The more you tell people about your Pinterest presence, the more likely they are to check you out there and follow you. Even regular Pinterest users need to be reminded, sometimes, of what you’re doing on Pinterest and doing so will encourage them to repin your content, as well as share and comment more.

Build a Community

Just like all other social networks, your brand on Pinterest will grow in proportion to the effort you put in towards becoming a part of the community. A good way to start doing this is by following other boards in your niche and forming relationships with the people and contributors behind them. Very important, take the time to comment on popular pins and repin other’s images. Mention other brands and people by name when you can when pinning from their blogs. This will help to place the reciprocity effect in a way that introduces you to people positively and gives them the opportunity to further share your work. Even they help you same way by repining your images.

Conclusion

Being Active is an important component in any social media platform and Pinterest is no exception. Go in with the mindset of helping your users and customers and create an amazing experience for them, visually and otherwise, and you can’t help but succeed. I wish your Pinterest marketing efforts improve through this post and lead the growth and success for you on the brand marketing.